If... Things have changed quite alot in the last thirteen years, that goes without saying, but as subcultures go, goth's been around for a very long time and despite injections of new blood, and new ideas, things are getting tired. I hope this isn't going to turn into rant about how much better things used to be in the past; that's not my intention at all. Instead I'd like to draw a couple of comparisons and see if we can't come up with a way of getting back to our roots (or getting seriously retro for anyone who is new to the goth thang!) I'll make some allusions to the net, which is a microcosm of the world wide gothic scene (a word which I hate with quite a passion, but as it is in general useage.....), but in general I'll keep to the real world. Let's take it one step at a time.... CLUBBING How we used to play, in those darkly remembered neon lit nights. We still play now, of course, but the Club scene isn't what it used to be (here we go again...), simply because there are no clubs anymore. If Disco killed punk, then House Music killed goth clubs and indie music dropped the heavily nailed coffin off a cliff into a sea of acid. Goth clubs became discos. There are one or two notable exceptions - the Slimelight, and Epitath - and these are probably only exceptions because I know quite a lot of people when I go there, or have bands playing, or both. Perversly enough, it is the house/techno clubs that have resurrected the 'club feel' on their nights; it seems strange that a subculture dedicated to dance has remembered the 'edge' there used to be in the mid 80s, and done thier best to bring it back. A good night out should be something more than a drunken fashion show - if it isn't me might as well have 9 pints of beer and a kebab and go looking for a fight. I'd like a bit of adrenalin with my eyeliner, a bit of variety with my snakebite, and a bit of a dance and a nice chat as well, just to round things off. There was a club once, which shall remain nameless (but you can see a guest pass a couple of paragraphs up), which started out like the slimelight. An all-nighter in West London. It got raided and the promoter/DJ was busted for allowing the punters to take drugs [Noooo! Really? Drugs!], 18 months later it was back, as an official club, with queues around the centre of Leicester Square and a dressed up crowd of thrill-seakers with absolutely no idea who they were going to meet or what was going to happen next. You'd meet a woman with a snake (employed one week by the club), or a man with a rat (he smuggled it in, in his hair); a week later there'd be a floorshow of some description. There were the go-go dancers(!?), the woman who wore only a tray of sweets, and the eponymous KitKat chocolate bar on the way in. TOURING No one follows bands anymore. Ok, that's not true - Pete does But let's think about this clearly; the Quarriers must be mainly thirty by now, if they ever retire (after the pigs have finished their airport), who is going to be responsible for teaching a new generation to sit on kitbags in the middle of railway station concourses, build pyramids, throw paper, chant stuff, and 'form a circle'? I've not thought about it much since X-Mal split up. I considered following the Utah Saints, and they haven't played since, Alien Sex Fiend insist on playing either the back of beyond, or at 3pm on wet Monday afternoons (this is true), and Stun have their own, rather small following, who at least know how to slamdance, but look they like a bunch of casuals and have to form a triangle on account of there being only three of them. I've still got my kitbag though (for trips up north, weddings, and for putting swords and stuff in), and my clogs are in the back of Chris's car. Who knows, perhaps X-Mal will reform and I'll have no excuse for not going to Nottingham ever again. FANZINES Ever since Tom Vague stopped writing about music and weird conspiracy theories and started writing about football and weird conspiracy theories there haven't been any really outstanding fanzines. They look good, have great interviews and articles. But they look so nice. I'm as guilty as the rest, Take a Bite is good fun, but apart from the odd giggle it's not contributing much to anyone. We've lost our radical edge, gone away from the anarcho-gothic-punk leftist/libertarian shout-it-from-the-sewers approach, and dedicated ourselves to interesting fonts, artistic pictures in black and white, and reviews and interviews. If we hate music journalists so much, why do we seek to emulate them? When I first had the idea for Aircrash Monthly, I wanted to do a proper monthly magazine - a bit like TIME or Newsweek, but get writers who believed in something and were willing to say it, and combine it with the sort of sanitised or vaguely amusing stuff you actually get. Where does your average goth on the street stand on 'Fox Hunting', 'Squatting', 'Politics'? Does one have to be a crustie to care? I hope not! Tom Vague wrote about music, life, magic, weird politics, issues, and travel; he interviewed bands, situationists, artists, and squatters from Bath. We, as a subculture of fanzine writers, are all trying to get the same interview with the same bands, and reviewing the same records! Why? BANDS Now this is where I could get in trouble. We all know which bands we like, which ones are often accused of being derivative, and which ones are just plain 'crap'. I think in my health check of goth circa '96 I have to say that the current spate of bands are pretty good thank you very much. I shudder to think about one or two recent American imports that have more to do with heavy metal than goth (you should know who I'm talking about), but as the general consensus within the subculture is they *aren't* gothic, I suppose there's not alot to worry about. It used to be that the gig-going goth and the club-going goth were two completely different animals. Fortunately this is no longer the case - there are bands who play and tour regularly who are also getting records played in clubs (and turning up to the clubs themselves on occasion). Would it help at all if I took this opportunity to slag off all those bands who take themselves too seriously, all the promoters who couldn't organize a bunch of lemmings on a cliff top, and anyone who carries four pints of cider into a pit? SUMMARY We've let ourselves go a bit. Whatever happened to the vibrant, speed-fuelled, darkest-black, excited and exciting, where-do-we-go-from here? bunch of weirdos from 13 years ago? Some wear pinstripes Some are dead Some wear toupees on their head Few are young and some are old The new ones do exactly what they're told Well, not quite.... Let's stop resting on our laurels, we're letting the bands do all the work, the snakebite do all our thinking, and we wonder why the new generation behave like a flock of wet mops - it's because that's what we look like. We are zombies - we used to be phantoms Reclaim the night..... /\../\ Sexbat